I didn’t set out to write a book about the emasculation of America. I set out to understand what I was watching on YouTube. For months I had been falling down the rabbit hole of videos documenting something that didn’t have a clean name yet but was impossible to miss once you started looking.
Men and women who couldn’t stand each other. Not in the ordinary way people complain about the opposite sex. That’s as old as anything. It had a different quality to it. Conclusions already reached before the argument started. Comment sections full of people who sounded like they were preparing for a war nobody had formally declared.
How do you know it was not fringe?
The numbers, the only reliable test available. I watched enough of it to know it wasn’t fringe. The view counts were too high. The audiences were too large and too young. That distinction is more important than it sounds. Anything can be found on the internet, and the existence of a video proves nothing about how many people hold the view. What the numbers showed was a major audience, skewing young, engaging heavily. Something can be repellent and mainstream at the same time. Dismissing it as fringe because you find it unpleasant is the reliable way to be surprised later.
The book on this: The Emasculation of America is the argument that came out of months of watching something that didn’t have a clean name yet, and the blowback is expected.
Why did nobody name the YouTube problem?
Because the existing frames didn’t fit and nobody had built a new one. Most coverage of this material does one of two things. It treats the whole phenomenon as a moral panic. That doesn’t explain the numbers. Or it treats the content as a plain description of reality. That requires accepting a set of claims that don’t survive checking.
Neither of those was what I was looking at. What I was looking at was a large number of young people, of both sexes, arriving at a settled hostility toward the other one, apparently before having much personal evidence either way.
That’s a thing that needs explaining instead of condemning or endorsing, and the explaining is what took a book.
What made it worth months of attention?
That it was happening at a scale I hadn’t expected, to an age group with the most at stake.
Something was happening to the relationship between men and women in America at a scale that made it worth understanding instead of dismissing. Whatever you conclude about the content, a generation forming its expectations from this material will carry those expectations into every relationship it attempts. That’s a boring point about where people get their models from when they don’t have much direct experience yet.
Why write about YouTube radicalization knowing it will draw fire?
Because I’ve stopped optimizing for that, and I can tell you exactly when.
I’m getting older. I prefer my own company. And I stopped worrying about what people think of my conclusions around the same time I started being more interested in whether those conclusions were true.
Dismissing it as fringe because you find it unpleasant is the reliable way to be surprised later.
Those two happened together and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Worrying about reception and caring whether you’re right are in tension, because the first requires anticipating an audience and the second requires ignoring one. The blowback will come from people who haven’t read it carefully and from people who have read it carefully and don’t like where the argument goes. Only the second group is worth answering, and in my experience they’re the smaller one.
Only the second group is worth answering, and in my experience they’re the smaller one.Share on X
What is the actual position?
That something real is happening, that the available explanations don’t account for it, and that the people most affected are the least equipped to notice it happening to them.
It’s not a defense of the material I was watching or an argument that one side is right. It’s an attempt to explain a large observed phenomenon in terms that account for the numbers instead of in terms that make anybody comfortable.
My take
Dismiss nothing as fringe until you’ve seen the view counts. The videos I watched for months had audiences too large and too young to wave off. Nobody had a clean name for it, and the people most affected were the least able to notice. Care more about whether a conclusion is true than how it’ll be received. Answer the critics who read carefully and ignore the rest.
Is conspiracy content on YouTube fringe?
Check the view counts before deciding it’s fringe. That’s the first thing I did and it changed what I thought I was looking at.
Separate the content from the phenomenon. You can find the material contemptible and still need to explain why so many people are watching it.
Notice the ages. That made me take it seriously.
Read the argument before responding to the title. Most of the objections I expect are to a book I didn’t write.
Bring a better explanation. Mine may be wrong. What I haven’t found is an alternative that accounts for the same observations.
I went looking for an explanation of what was on my screen and didn’t find one. That’s generally the point at which I end up writing something.
| Step | What to do | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Check the view counts | Look at the numbers before deciding it’s fringe. | Something can be repellent and mainstream at the same time. |
| Separate content from phenomenon | Find the material contemptible if you like, then explain why so many watch it. | The audience size still needs explaining. |
| Notice the ages | Look at who is watching. | Audiences too large and too young made me take it seriously. |
| Read the argument first | Respond to the argument, not the title. | Most expected objections are to a book I didn’t write. |
| Bring a better explanation | Offer an account that fits the same observations. | Moral panic and plain description both fail to explain the numbers. |
